Unless otherwise indicated herein, the materials described in this section are not prior art to the claims in this application and are not admitted to be prior art by inclusion in this section.
An unmanned vehicle, which may also be referred to as an autonomous vehicle, is a vehicle capable of travel without a physically-present human operator. An unmanned vehicle may operate in a remote-control mode, in an autonomous mode, or in a partially autonomous mode. The lack of an on-board pilot allows UAVs to perform functions and assume sizes and geometries that would not be possible for an aircraft having a pilot. A UAV can include sensors that provide information about the internal state and/or environment of the UAV, allowing the UAV to avoid obstacles in the environment and perform programmed objectives.
A UAV might operate in a crowded environment, for example the airspace over a city. The airspace over a city could include many obstacles that the UAV must avoid, including commercial and military aircraft, balloons, buildings, antenna masts and guy wires, and other UAVs. In order to operate in such a crowded environment, the UAV must have sufficient information about these or other potential obstacles in order to avoid them.